Leader of Hezbollah Warns It Is Ready to Come to Syria’s Aid

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite organization, edged closer on Tuesday to acknowledging that its fighters were battling rebels in neighboring Syria, an intervention that threatens to drag Lebanon deeper into that conflict.

The leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared in a televised speech that Hezbollah could become more deeply involved in the future, and warned that Syria had “real friends” who would not allow it “to fall into the hands” of America, Israel and Islamic extremists, the forces that the Syrian government routinely blames for the two-year uprising against it.

He appeared to be referring to Iran, a patron of both Hezbollah and the Syrian government, as well as Hezbollah itself, whose well-organized guerrilla fighting force, honed by past battles with the Israeli military in southern Lebanon, is widely considered more effective than Lebanon’s army. Hezbollah relies on Iran and Syria to supply its arms.

“You won’t be able to bring down Damascus and you cannot bring down the regime, militarily,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “The battle will be long.”

As President Obama faces questions about whether the Syrian government has crossed what his administration has called the “red line” of using chemical weapons in the conflict, Mr. Nasrallah sketched some red lines of his own.

He warned of “very serious repercussions” if rebels destroyed or damaged the shrine of Sayida Zeinab, a site near Damascus that is a revered pilgrimage site for many Muslims, especially Shiites. Such an attack would unleash an uncontrollable conflict, he said, invoking a fearsome precedent: the destruction of a Shiite shrine in Iraq in 2006 that contributed to years of sectarian bloodletting between Shiites and Sunni Muslims there.

Fighting has engulfed areas around the Syrian shrine, and many Shiite fighters — Syrian as well as Iraqi and Lebanese — have rushed to defend it, according to fighters interviewed in Syria.

Until now, Mr. Nasrallah has maintained that individual members of Hezbollah were fighting to defend Lebanese citizens in Shiite villages inside Syria, notably around Qusayr, which has become a flash point of sectarian conflict not far from the Lebanon border. But on Tuesday, Mr. Nasrallah made clear that Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful political and military organization, is ready to back its longtime ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, with its full organizational might.

“We won’t let the Lebanese in Qusayr be exposed to attacks,” he said. “Whoever needs help, we wont hesitate in assisting them,” he said, adding that he was referring not only to Shiites but to all Lebanese who needed help. The Lebanese Army, he noted, was not in a position to send fighters to Syria.

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Mr. Nasrallah denied the widespread opposition claim that Iran had sent troops to Syria. “There might be a small number of experts who have been in Syria for decades,” he said, “but you are fighting Syrian forces.”

Syrian opposition leaders have long charged that Hezbollah was sending an increasing number of fighters to Syria, and in recent weeks have said the party is leading the fight against rebels in bloody battles around Qusayr.

Sunni factions in Lebanon — which still bears the scars of its own sectarian civil war — have also sent fighters to Syria, on the rebel side. Sectarian rhetoric in Lebanon has ratcheted up in recent weeks, with some imams sympathetic to Syria’s opposition issuing fatwas, or religious decrees, calling on Sunnis to fight in Syria.

As Lebanese factions take sides, they pose new challenges to the country’s stability. Lebanese leaders are struggling to form a new government, deeply divided by the Syrian conflict, despite the country’s official policy of “disassociation” from it.

Until now, Hezbollah has kept its public statements on Syria relatively subdued, partly to avoid further inflaming Lebanese politics. But after the Hezbollah-led government was dissolved last month, Mr. Nasrallah appears to have calculated that an all-out push to save Hezbollah’s ally, Mr. Assad, and the arms conduit he provides is worth the domestic political costs.

Critics attacked Mr. Nasrallah’s speech in Lebanese news outlets and social media, saying it was contradictory to blame the United States and its allies for intervening in Syria — where a government crackdown on peaceful protests prompted a conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people — while claiming a moral imperative for Hezbollah to intervene.

Mr. Nasrallah cast himself as the voice of reason. He castigated clerics who had issued fatwas calling for the death of Syrian government employees — “never mind if they turn out to be oppressed people themselves.”

No loyalist cleric has issued a fatwa saying “it is O.K. to spill the blood of everyone who works for the opposition,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “Find me one cleric who issued such a fatwa.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 2013, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Leader of Hezbollah Warns It Is Ready to Come to Syria’s Aid. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe